Cool News
Our First Review of A&E’s ANDROMEDA STRAIN Mini!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
The “Andromeda Strain” miniseries doesn’t hit A&E until May 26 (or DVD until June 3), but it’s just been transmitted to audiences in the United Kingdom via the Sky satellite.
Our reviewer says, “Even alcohol didn’t help relieve the pain as I sat through it. In the end I wish I hadn’t bothered watching this fiasco. To be honest I wish they hadn’t even made it. Heck, there’s three hours of my life I’m never going to get back again.”
Here’s “Troyminator”:
The Andromeda Strain, based on the Michael Crichton novel aired this weekend on Sky TV in the UK. I had high hopes for this mini series. I love the novel and I’ve always enjoyed watching the original movie.
The story
A satellite crashes to Earth and releases a virus that wipes out an entire town in a matter of minutes. There are only two survivors; an alcoholic old man and a young baby. A team of scientists in a high-tech underground laboratory try to find a way to stop the rapidly mutating virus and unravel the puzzle of why the drunk and the baby survived. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, a containment breach in the lab activates the countdown on a nuclear bomb and a race against time to save themselves (and the world) ensues.
There are spoilers ahead!
Originally committed to film by Robert (Star Trek) Wise in 1971 the Andromeda Strain is typical Michael Crichton fare. There’s a group of people in a high tech environment and something goes wrong (hey it worked in Westworld, Jurassic Park and Prey so why change a winning formula?). With Tony and Ridley Scott attached as exec Producers the new two part mini series looks like it has a decent pedigree in Sci-Fi and action behind the scenes.
In the original movie the technology was cutting edge for the late sixties and the basic premise of the story and the technology have been updated for a modern audience. It DOES get techno-jargon heavy at times but that’s not the biggest problem with this big budget fiasco.
I settled down to watch it Monday evening and twenty minutes into the proceeding I realised that I was bored. This is meant to be a tense, dramatic techno thriller but instead it just dragged on and on. From the onset things looked dire as two kids watched a satellite fall out of the sky and then against all reason loaded it into the back of their pickup and headed home with it. The military recovery team follow the satellites signal into town and find the place littered with bodies. The soldiers die horribly and suddenly as the virus gets to work and the military activates the “Wildfire” team, a group of scientists formed to combat viral threats. Benjamin Bratt as Dr Stone, a molecular biologist leads the team and nearly sent me to sleep with his one note performance. Damn the guy was boring. I struggled to believe that anyone this dull could possibly have the ladies man rep that the character was meant to have. Stone is the only character from the novel to keep his original name, all the other scientists have had their names switched in an unnecessary way except for Daniel Day Kim (Lost) as Dr Tsi Chou a former Chinese scientist (at least that name change made sense). Kim was actually one of the two actors in this that I found watchable to be fair. The other was Eric McCormack (Will and Grace) as reporter Jack Nash, a character created just for the mini series.
There were some nifty little scenes where we saw some of the virus victims going insane and killing themselves or others and the two coolest scenes from the movie have been retained; the first where the scientists enter the virus ravaged town and slice open the wrist of one of the victims only to have powdered blood pour from the wound. The other is where a jet is overflying the town and all the rubber begins to disintegrate as the virus attacks it. Now these looked cool in the seventies, but they looked incredibly CG in this re-imagined version.
Some of the stuff in there just seems tacked on, such as a terrorist threat sub-plot that seemed to come out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. There are conspiracies and webs of intrigue galore and one of the most amazingly stupid pieces of writing I’ve ever witnessed in a re-make.
The satellite in the novel and original was designed to find upper atmosphere microorganisms for germ warfare. All fine and dandy right? It ties is nicely with the modern world of WMD’s and biowarfare. For some reason however the writer has decided that this isn’t good enough and in an incredible stretch of the imagination the probe has apparently been sent through a WORMHOLE from the FUTURE! What? I couldn’t believe the sheer stupidity of it. Why drop a perfectly decent plot device that WORKS and makes sense for one that you don’t even get in crap sci-fi?
The other piece of stupidity I laughed at was the way that the military tried to get rid of the pesky reporter to prevent him going public with his story. They shoved him on a helicopter with a bomb. Sorry? They blew up thousands of dollars of military aircraft and several servicemen just to silence a reporter? Why not take him out back and put a bullet through his head after all the posturing about him being persona non grata?
After watching the first installment I was hoping that they’d saved all the good stuff for part two. Boy was I wrong. Even alcohol didn’t help relieve the pain as I sat through it. In the end I wish I hadn’t bothered watching this fiasco. To be honest I wish they hadn’t even made it. Heck, there’s three hours of my life I’m never going to get back again. And don’t even get me started about the “thumb” scene.
$15 For Spidey’s Whole MTV Series??
One Of Hundreds Of Titles In
The SPRING TV 2FER SALE!!
Stay Out Of Trouble!!
Three-For-Two Blu-Ray Sale!!
The story
A satellite crashes to Earth and releases a virus that wipes out an entire town in a matter of minutes. There are only two survivors; an alcoholic old man and a young baby. A team of scientists in a high-tech underground laboratory try to find a way to stop the rapidly mutating virus and unravel the puzzle of why the drunk and the baby survived. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, a containment breach in the lab activates the countdown on a nuclear bomb and a race against time to save themselves (and the world) ensues.
There are spoilers ahead!
Originally committed to film by Robert (Star Trek) Wise in 1971 the Andromeda Strain is typical Michael Crichton fare. There’s a group of people in a high tech environment and something goes wrong (hey it worked in Westworld, Jurassic Park and Prey so why change a winning formula?). With Tony and Ridley Scott attached as exec Producers the new two part mini series looks like it has a decent pedigree in Sci-Fi and action behind the scenes.
In the original movie the technology was cutting edge for the late sixties and the basic premise of the story and the technology have been updated for a modern audience. It DOES get techno-jargon heavy at times but that’s not the biggest problem with this big budget fiasco.
I settled down to watch it Monday evening and twenty minutes into the proceeding I realised that I was bored. This is meant to be a tense, dramatic techno thriller but instead it just dragged on and on. From the onset things looked dire as two kids watched a satellite fall out of the sky and then against all reason loaded it into the back of their pickup and headed home with it. The military recovery team follow the satellites signal into town and find the place littered with bodies. The soldiers die horribly and suddenly as the virus gets to work and the military activates the “Wildfire” team, a group of scientists formed to combat viral threats. Benjamin Bratt as Dr Stone, a molecular biologist leads the team and nearly sent me to sleep with his one note performance. Damn the guy was boring. I struggled to believe that anyone this dull could possibly have the ladies man rep that the character was meant to have. Stone is the only character from the novel to keep his original name, all the other scientists have had their names switched in an unnecessary way except for Daniel Day Kim (Lost) as Dr Tsi Chou a former Chinese scientist (at least that name change made sense). Kim was actually one of the two actors in this that I found watchable to be fair. The other was Eric McCormack (Will and Grace) as reporter Jack Nash, a character created just for the mini series.
There were some nifty little scenes where we saw some of the virus victims going insane and killing themselves or others and the two coolest scenes from the movie have been retained; the first where the scientists enter the virus ravaged town and slice open the wrist of one of the victims only to have powdered blood pour from the wound. The other is where a jet is overflying the town and all the rubber begins to disintegrate as the virus attacks it. Now these looked cool in the seventies, but they looked incredibly CG in this re-imagined version.
Some of the stuff in there just seems tacked on, such as a terrorist threat sub-plot that seemed to come out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. There are conspiracies and webs of intrigue galore and one of the most amazingly stupid pieces of writing I’ve ever witnessed in a re-make.
The satellite in the novel and original was designed to find upper atmosphere microorganisms for germ warfare. All fine and dandy right? It ties is nicely with the modern world of WMD’s and biowarfare. For some reason however the writer has decided that this isn’t good enough and in an incredible stretch of the imagination the probe has apparently been sent through a WORMHOLE from the FUTURE! What? I couldn’t believe the sheer stupidity of it. Why drop a perfectly decent plot device that WORKS and makes sense for one that you don’t even get in crap sci-fi?
The other piece of stupidity I laughed at was the way that the military tried to get rid of the pesky reporter to prevent him going public with his story. They shoved him on a helicopter with a bomb. Sorry? They blew up thousands of dollars of military aircraft and several servicemen just to silence a reporter? Why not take him out back and put a bullet through his head after all the posturing about him being persona non grata?
After watching the first installment I was hoping that they’d saved all the good stuff for part two. Boy was I wrong. Even alcohol didn’t help relieve the pain as I sat through it. In the end I wish I hadn’t bothered watching this fiasco. To be honest I wish they hadn’t even made it. Heck, there’s three hours of my life I’m never going to get back again. And don’t even get me started about the “thumb” scene.
-
+ Expand All
-
And I suck
-
before a movie recently. It looked like complete crap. this review doesnt surprise me.
-
I would like to know about the thumb scene...
-
Personally I never really got into the book as much as I did with Jurassic Park or even Sphere. I do agree that "plot twist" with the satellite is pretty weaksauce, though. It would have been much better if they got close to the satellite and saw it was something from Moya or Farscape-1
-
And wanted to kill myself. The acting is terrible, and the plotting is plodding. Just read the book again.
And Crichton is credited as 'J. Michael Crichton' for some reason. -
May 18, 2008 11:31:13 AM CDT
Andromeda's gonna Blast You Ass with a Meteor!
by this_talkback_is_on_crazypills
full of viruses
-
i'd have thought that, between the reimagined Flash Gordon, the revamped Knight Rider and the eventual let-down of the rebooted Bionic Woman, hollywood would have had its fill of lame remakes of 70s properties.
But the hack who dreamt up the whole WORMHOLE from the FUTURE twist deserves a special prize. that's super-fucking retarded even by the standards of recent shitty revamps. -
...i felt this was written before he felt the need to make all his novels begging to be screenplays...seriously, Jurassic Park is a great idea, but NOT a good book. Crichton is over-rated. That said, I saw the first part of this and COME ON!!?!?! That's it...just COME ON!?!?!
-
This was available (the full completed story, both episodes) several weeks ago. It starts off well, then quickly turns to raw suck. Most of the main characters die in the last 20 minutes for the stupidest of reasons. The acting gets horrifyingly bad, and the ending fairly pointless. Show had potential.. but they screwed the pooch with too many red herrings and pointless side stories that went promptly no-where.
-
...download it, watch it, and then dont waste your time on it for the last 2 hours and 40 minutes.
-
...only one of the scientists can de-activate a nuke that is going to go off and kill them all. He is dead so another one of the scientists cuts off his thumb to use on the Thumbprint pad thing so some one else can stop the nuke. Never happened in the book...
-
Don't fall in the reactor cores pool of aqua velva... it leads to having your thumb cut-off.
-
Thats so ridiculously stupid. In the book, there's facial recognition cameras and voice recognition, so that only that one living person can deactivate the nuke, and you can't just cut off their thumb and use it.
And the book was set in the 60's!!!! -
yes, impressive that the atomic failsafe of the state-of-the-art Wildfire facility can apparently be fooled by a biometric bait-and-switch that's been used in countless spy thrillers.
-
weekend, because there will be countless things to do besides wasting ones time watching this suck-fest.BTW, the "autopsy" scene in the book is much more graphic, and the blood in the victims body clotted, not crystallized to a fine powder. I thought in this day of CSI gore all over the tv screen, this scene could have been more acurately presented. But, what the fuck does it matter...wormhole??..really?? Good thing Wise passed away, so he doesn't have to see what was done to his fine adaptation.
-
oh- THAT Robert Wise...
-
I watched the original for the first time about a month ago and had to stop the movie so I could look up how they filmed a scene (this is the animal testing scene). A terrifying sequence I wasn't expecting from a film shot in the 70s. I won't spoil it, but they don't cut away like they do in the mini-series. Also, I agree with Troyminator's comments that the mini-series is terrible. Some of the worst CG I've seen from something with a budget like this. The acting by Ricky Schroder is the worst I've seen from him, but that's probably because the script is so terrible. They completely miss what made the original a superior work, the claustrophobic atmosphere of the wildfire facility. Don't watch, don't download, it ain't worth your time. Watch the original instead. It's slow, but the animal scene is worth it.
-
You are a fucking idiot. Crichton is a hero of the right, douche nozzle. I'm surprised to hear that they didn't try to work some global warming denial rhetoric into this turd.
-
Assholes & Elbows
-
... were designed to tell if the finger that touched it was attached to a living body. After all, it was thought to be a fairly obvious way to try to beat the scanner, cutting fingers off ...
-
But the 2nd part was so freaking awful! Some might like it, in a so-bad-it's-good sorta way, but this one is an insult to Wise's original film.
-
Of course he's batshit now but the original movie was pretty damn good.
And Paula Kelly was in it. -
But a wormhole? Jesus. That's all I needed to know. At least the original film is still pretty good.
-
Just in case some Sci-Fi afficianado decides to send a better version of the Andromeda Strain to air through a wormhole from the future.
-
...the union agreed unanimously, we all want to keep our thumbs.
-
The trailers for this were quite mis-leading as they led me to believe TAS would be more faithful to the story than it really was. A lot of the dialogue they showed was straight from the book but the story itself diverges greatly.
SPOILERS: I did sort of enjoy it, but what made the original so scary and creepy was the very grounded and realistic story it told. This new version involves time travel, worm holes and secret government conspiracies etc. It just goes too far over the top and removes that layer or realism that made the original so scary.
It does leave things open for a sequel, but I'm not sure if I will bother watching it if they make it. Overall a missed opportunity, and certainly not a patch on Robert Wise's superb film. -
"I'm surprised to hear that they didn't try to work some global warming denial rhetoric into this turd."
They almost do. It's set in the near future and America is about to start mining the undersea vents of the Earth wiping out a life form that is critical to stopping Andromeda. So we get plenty of clichéd lines about mankind causing species to go extinct and in so doing killing ourselves. It's all pretty preachy and pompous. -
poor Jin.. so underutilized,
-
Haven't seen this but I have read the book and recently saw the 70s movie. Strikes me as a waste of a story since in the end (spoiler!) nothing they do matters and TAS mutates away on its own. Not exactly good storytelling. It's kind of like saying "...and then, after all the battles with spider-man, the sandman just decides to leave."
-
Andromeda was one of the books that got me into reading along with Catcher in the Rye and Tom Sawyer. They are are indelibly etched in my mind. oh, and Day of the Jackel. Adromeda the movie captured the claustrophobic essence of the book. As to Crichton himself i happened upon a speech he was giving on global warming on C-Span one day and i was like, "whoa, what happened to this guy" First class douchnozzle like you said. As to wormholes, wow, Hollywood continues to rape things that were fine and should be left alone. here's an idea: THINK OF NEW IDEAS!
-
It's no surprise that they would ruin The Andromeda Strain and tack on nonsensical new scenes and remove what made the original interesting. A&E produced a horrible remake/adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven a few years ago and removed half the story and dumbed down the ending. Someone at A&E feels they need to "reimagine" these classic stories and can't make them without changing them. That would be fine if they had any talent or imagination.
-
Great book and it needs to be made properly.
Unfortunately todays horde of filmmakers seem like total talentless hacks. -
Paraphrase this for todays filmmakers;
You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill -
Wow. With both Scott brothers behind this and a big television budget, you think they would've nailed something cool. But I can't believe they went with fucking wormholes. Who's braindead idea was that? And Benjamin Bratt as a scientist? Nah. Poor, poor casting. I thought Bratt was excellent in "The Great Raid" and even "Miss Congeniality," but he doesn't radiate brains. He shouldn't have been cast as Stone.
I saw the original "Andromeda Strain" years ago, and though I was marginally entertained by its germy claustrophia, I didn't think it was that great. It's a slow, plodding movie, the kind everyone says is "awesome" but no one ever wants to rent.
Boy, with the cast, budget, and directors available to the Scott brothers, I was expecting something tasty here. Hmm. -
sounds bad!Time Travell.....
-
There are numerous reasons why this movie sucks, mainly the way they use the cool stuff from the original in silly ways. E.G. I really hated Daniel Dae Kim's epileptic fit, which just happens to demolish the nuke deactivator, whereas in the Robert Wise version the scientist's fit and the unfinished station served to make a point about how even with the greatest minds working on a problem, we are still fallible, and therefore doomed.
Though it was obviously going to be a dumbed-down version right from the stupid opening scene with screaming and death and melodrama (compared to the calm menace of the original), I did a big ::facepalm:: when Benjamin Bratt (at his blandest) looks into a camera for a retina scan, and we get an FX shot of the machine mapping his iris instead. If the guys responsible for this couldn't be bothered to get that simple thing right, it's too much to expect they would respect the audience's intelligence (all of the convincing scientific talk is taken word for word from the book and film; the rest is "OMG it's using crystalline resonance to communicate with its disparate parts!" style silliness straight out of a bad episode of ST:TNG). Burn the negatives! -
It has just the right level of scathing disappointment.
-
I downloaded this and the first half isn't that bad. I've seen the original film long ago and don't really remember much of it. The first half of this is not bad as it is mainly centered on what is going on. It really falls apart once they start to try to explain what is happening and the virus has these amazing powers like eating a fighter jet and telepathically communicating to other parts of the virus that are locked up so that once you kill one part of the virus then the other part mutates to be immune. Then the whole thing totally falls apart with the whole wormhole. On a side note, when did the woman who played Kate on the Drew Carry Show (and apparently has been on Scrubs?) get such a squeeky voice? It was just irritating.
-
It's reverse psychology, I tell ya. LOL
-
Its since 1 month available online..Firts part was ok... But part 2......Can't believe that the brothers Scott can produce such garbage.
-
I enjoyed it, very good remake. The mini-series was true to the book, minus the obvious need to update elements of the book to modern times, mainly technology and politics. See for yourself and give it a chance, I thought it was pretty good.
-
I didn't hate it, I thought they updated some of the concepts pretty well. Plus the woman from Scrubs has always been on of my favs.
-
I do believe I'll pass on this one and schedule something more fun for myself. Like a root canal.
-
Wow, I was actually looking forward to this since I like Crichton's books (for the most part) and I thought ANDROMEDA was ripe for a modern re-telling with updated production values which could more realistically show "what" the germ could do. But after reading this review my jaw is on the floor over the utterly ridiculous and truly laughable wormhole idea that's been introduced. Talk about adding utter bullshit into a science-based story where there was absolutely, positively no need to. What the hell were these morons thinking? Talk about a piss-poor story point that just sends things spiraling off into lame ass fantasyland.For crying out loud, if you're going to say it's a probe that came through a wormhole and go that sci-fi route, then why not just go all-out and say the probe came through and was sent with the germ as part of an ATTACK, where Andromeda was MEANT to kill off the Earth's population? And then end the mini-series with other probes landing or whatever? I swear, this one plot point is so out there and so groan inducing that it turns this thing sour on the spot.What stuns me is that the writer for this is Robert Schenkkan. Believe it or not, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and he wrote THE QUIET AMERICAN which was generally well-received for its script. I don't know if this wormhole fiasco is his idea or the Scott brothers (as producers) wanted it worked in......But whoever thought of this suckitude, here's all I can say: YOU STINK AS A WRITER. GET YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM YOUR KEYBOARD RIGHT NOW AND GO GET A REAL JOB!
-
I was hoping this would be at least fun. I enjoyed the old movie, never go around to reading the book but read of bunch of his other stuff. Got his most recent book up on my list to read next.
-
Looks like crap. Beware. Buy some other Blu's instead.
-
Is probably one of the coolest things I've seen in anything in a while. This was a fairly cool miniseries.
-
I was so-so about whether I'd watch this. I'll pass now -- I have a full plate of other shows I have to get caught up with.
-
Saw the mini-series, loved the original Robert Wise film and this doesn't even hold a candle to it. Benjamin Bratt was awful and the only thing that made him look like Sir Olivier was the actors playing his dysfunctional family. There were so many unnecessary characters including McCormack's reporter. Andre Braugher felt like he was sleepwalking through this mini series. And the brilliant decontamination process from the original movie when they first enter scoop with the burning off of the skin layers and the robot arm injection (which always gave me the creeps) has been replaced with an awful car wash (think Dr. No, but cheezier). Save your time and see the original film!
-
May 19, 2008 7:24:59 AM CDT
Apparently Michael Chrichton wrote one of his critics into...
by rbatty024
his last book as a child molester with a small dick. I kid you not. I just learned about this the other day. Here's a link:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3qnr6j
Anyway, what a thin skinned bastard. Chrichton has always struck me as a lazy prose writer. That didn't bother me when I was in middle school but after a while I decided not to waste my time with his books. Even when I did read his stuff, he only had about a fifty percent batting average. -
This in not STAR TREK. This is a THIS COULD HAPPEN STORY not a WTF? Let me guess they have a scene where they are looking at the "UFO" and the find a ID "made in America 2215" "Oh my god 2215!" " this must be from the future!" " how could that be?" " It must of came through a wormhole!" "Yes That is it, a wormhole..." cue music! WTF! Did they keep the weed joke?
-
I read the script and watched the original the other day. No comparison; the original has class. The mini-series is cheap wine.
-
Man does the Ironman game suck, not to mention Incredible Hulk will as well.Is this what Marvel parted ways with Capcom for?!?
-
Stone supposed is a Nobel Laureate Consummate Washington Insider responsible for what would be Now Multi-Billion Dollar facility 100MM in 1971 Movie. This is somebody 50+ see Sir Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L Jackson, Edward James Olmos etc
-
May 19, 2008 9:42:04 AM CDT
At least, in the original, they actually LOOKED like scientists
by mockingbird girl
In the new version, they all look like bland supermodels. I've got no problem accepting an alien virus... but a team entirely made up of hot scientists? I can only suspend my disbelief so far. ;-)
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain_%282008_miniseries%29
See Plot section -
...and it remains very good. The rare smart sci-fi with an atypical cast that delivers in each and every role.
-
"Strikes me as a waste of a story since in the end (spoiler!) nothing they do matters and TAS mutates away on its own."
I think your memory may need refreshing. Stopping the bomb mattered because it would have fueled rampant mutation of the
organism, resulting in many lethal strains. Figuring out the PH vulnerability allowed them to control the cloud of
released bugs, using cloud seeding to wash them into the ocean to kill them.
Geekily yours, Mpb. -
We KNEW this was going to be bad as soon as they started renaming characters just so some writer could claim he had his thumb in the pie.
I must admit I had not anticipated "WORMHOLE! ...FROM! ...THE FUTURE!!!" levels of idiocy, but my expectations have not been disappointed. -
...you're safe from the "wormhole virus"! Sounds unwatchable... thanks for the warning.
-
...or don't.
-
Y'know, Herc, for fear of you being deemed irrelevant, you might want to comment on the validity of lostfan108's spoilers for TNPLH Pts. 2 & 3.
-
I was thinking of watching this. now, no way.
-
They try to bring in all this cliched government conspiracy stuff that just takes away from what was an incredibly tense scenario in the original film. They dumb down the science and pretty up the cast - it was never really going to work, was it?
-
are the cars. Once they enter the wildfire lab it holds up to any sci-fi from today. I'll just watch the DVD of the original.
-
It just boggles the mind that a very good novel (and film) could be re-made (why?) into such a piece of fetid, toxic waste. From the added material (such as Stone's broken family life) which added nothing useful to the plot, to the ridiculously unbelievable characterizations (such as the doctor who is willing to risk every living thing on Earth because some mysterious organization have kidnapped her husband and teen kid), it was painful beyond belief. And Hollywood wonders why remakes have such a bad reputation on average?
-
"Wondering" would presume they CARE. Everybody got a paycheck. People who wanted to got to pretend they were in charge. The studio churned some money and got another line item for tax writeoffs and cross-billing. EVERYBODY HAPPY!!!!
-
This is now the channel that gives us Dog The Bounty Hunter, King of Cars and that parking meter crap show. Come on!
If this is some attempt to restart the once brilliant A&E then I give them credit for trying. But I just know they made this because of all the Dog DVD sales.
Give us back the A&E that showed Northern Exposure and co-sponsored Poirot with the BBC. Give us back MI5/Spooks. Bring back biographies of important people, NOT Danny freakin Bonaduce! And we all need a rest from Bill Kurtis. I watched one episode of American Justice lately where the person they convicted has since been exonerated.
Either restore A&E or shut it down!
A&E Time Well Spent Elsewhere -
MBeemer - Everybody got a cheque, but they don't seem to be clueing in that a different product might (read: probably) would have got them BIGGER cheques. Original films made faithful to popular novels, from GONE WITH THE WIND to FIELD OF DREAMS make tons of money. Remakes generally don't. You'd think someone interested in getting well paid would have picked up on this and said "screw another remake, let's do something original and really cash in". But, no.
-
It was awful
-
Doing something original can score big, or bomb big. Doing a remake (for a zombified audience that eats them up) is easy pickin's.
-
This version of Andromeda Strain will suck, but I'll probably still watch it if nothing's on or if I don't feel like sticking my head in the oven on Monday night. I saw short commercial last night and I though, "Good..", then I read this and think "Bad!"
TAS works well as a novel because it was Crighton's first novel right out of med school or residency. TAS works well as a movie because Robert Wise directed it and every actor in it was a character actor not a star. The scientific underpinnings of the movie were cutting edge for 1970/71. They movie still holds up today. I just saw it last week on AMC, it's probably one of the reasons I got a degree in Micro... The novel and the movie especially were perfect. As much as I love zombie movies and things like 28 Days Later, the ONE thing this miniseries does not need is zombie/rage virus angle. Or terrorist for that matter. Or wormholes. Or even being made to begin with... -
Wow seriously it's worse than this review can describe, and I feel compelled to help flush this pile of turds. Just complete shit bad acting and plot wholes from start to end. Annoying scenes include but are very much not limited to.... 1. The tactical nuke going off at the beginning of part 2. As noted by one of the poorly acted characters, this is impossible due to the fail safes built into every modern nuclear weapon. Well fine, how bout explaining how the fuck it went off then? Nope. 2. Spraying the entire northwest USA with the antidote bacteria using only 4 fucking helicopters, and doing it in about 20 minutes time? Ok, right. Oh yeah, and after doing so, to illustrate the point that the outbreak is contained, the black general guy lets out an embarrassingly cliche "We did it!" Really? lol
-
nuff'said.
-
Well this has probably already been said, but they had the perfect real-world explanation for 'Project Scoop': The 'Stardust' comet sample mission crash landed : http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_1197761.htm
This version of 'Project Scoop' could have picked up Andromeda off the comet, or perhaps the government tried to grow biological samples taken off the comet and it mutated into Andromeda (the crystalline structure could even be explained away by the fact that the sample was imbedded in 'aerogel', a kind of 'foamy' glass).
Even if they stuck with the 'wormhole' idea, they could have said that our satellite crashed into something that came out of the wormhole, maybe a spaceborn living entity.
Anything other then 'We saw a wormhole and decided to pick up biological samples that might come out of it (can we say Hard Radiation and severe space/time warping anyone?).
Readers Talkback
User Login
Top Talkbacks
- Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012 -- 209 total posts 207 posts
- AVENGERS enemy revealed as pink boardgame pieces... You might suffer some form of elation... SPOILERS!!! -- 160 total posts 97 posts
- There's a STAR TREK video game that is going to lead into JJ's STAR TREK 2 apparently... -- 144 total posts 77 posts
- Here's The Red Band Trailer For Drafthouse Films' THE FP! -- 68 total posts 68 posts
- New JUDGE DREDD post production footage pops up -- 67 total posts 67 posts
- Does ‘SNL’ Rhyme With ‘Deschanel’?? Learn Which SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Vet Hosts After Sexy Zooey!! -- 64 total posts 60 posts
- To Commemorate The 3D Release Of STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas Wants You To Know...Greedo Shoots First!! -- 480 total posts 55 posts
- HANNA's Saoirse Ronan to boss around seven little people -- 53 total posts 50 posts
- Friday Brings SWEEPS DAY NINE!! Gab Here About Tonight’s FRINGE!! Plus Einstein on TIM, Wiig On PORTLANDIA, MAHER, CLONE, GIFTED, GRIMM, SPARTACUS, SUPERNATURAL, GOLD RUSH And More!! -- 118 total posts 32 posts
- SPACE 2099!! -- 182 total posts 27 posts